Justice committee  The tests should take no more than 30 minutes. It may be up to 45 minutes, depending on the physical condition of the person, but it's not an overly long process. We can go from start to finish in a little over half an hour.

Justice committee  No, there is not, actually. The coroners will do testing of persons who are deceased. We look at any fatality or serious crash to try to get as much evidence as we can to see if in fact there is some impairment or what the cause of the crash is, as we would with any investigation.

Justice committee  No. The demand will have to be made within a set period of time; the actual evaluation will be like a breath evaluation. We've got two hours to get it done. There are more factors than that, even for delays. Obviously right to counsel is what we find to be the biggest problem hindering investigations, or holding them up.

Justice committee  Of all cases going to court using the DRE protocol, in only two that I'm aware of have we not registered a conviction. In both cases it was not issues related to the evaluation that caused the case to be lost, but charter arguments. That said, we've been judicious about which cases go to court.

Justice committee  Very much so. We currently are running into a problem, particularly in British Columbia, because we've had the program there for so long. The person speaks to a lawyer, gets off the phone, and says, “I'm not doing this.” Basically B.C. is fortunate in that they've got a 24-hour prohibition for suspected drug usage, but they walk.

Justice committee  That in itself would be a possibility.

Justice committee  Well, I can't say he had the right to be protected from it. Again, it would be up to the investigating officer to ascertain if in fact there are some indicators a person may be impaired. If that were the case, then an investigation would commence to see if in fact the person was impaired.

Justice committee  No, I don't. I think Bill C-32 will make the roads safer for the vast majority of people. If it goes to court, will it be deemed to be a violation of their rights? Probably, but one that I hope would be acceptable, just the same as a breath test is. Because really all we're doing with the drug evaluation is paralleling the evidence that we gain through a breath test, the difference being that instead of using an instrument to obtain a breath sample for the blood alcohol concentration, we're using a trained police officer to gain the evidence of drug impairment.

Justice committee  The program originated in California in the late seventies, where two traffic officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were encountering more and more drivers who were impaired by substances other than alcohol. They spoke with some of their colleagues in their drug branch who had contacts in the medical community, and they developed a very rudimentary process.

Justice committee  No. This legislation would require that there be some indicators to show that the person may be impaired in order to follow through with an evaluation. Unfortunately, we don't have mandatory testing for persons involved in crashes, so without that component—Unless, again, there was something that would indicate the driver was impaired, they probably wouldn't have been tested.

Justice committee  Ultimately, it falls back on the officer being able to articulate in court why he took whatever action he took.

Justice committee  That is correct. The lesson plan for that has been developed in conjunction with medical practitioners to ensure that the things we're looking for are well within the capabilities of the police officer. That is to say, for pupil size, we use a card called a pupillometer. It has dots on it in half-millimetre increments.

Justice committee  We could look at the person's eyes. Are they watery or bloodshot? Is the white of the eye pink? Is it bloodshot? Are the pupils dilated in bright sunshine? Are they constricted in darkness? Is the person fumbling with his documents? What is his speech like? Is the person answering questions in what we consider to be proper fashion?

Justice committee  The training was done by police officers who have been trained as trainers. The first phase of the training is the standardized field sobriety test. During that time, the officers learn about the effects of alcohol and about how to administer and interpret the test. Then they participate in two alcohol correlation workshops.

Justice committee  Again, all the tests are administered by the police.